Guardian Angel
by Rabid-Cheetah
Summary: Four vignettes.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. They all belong to Carlton.  
  
Thanks to Tikatu for beta reading this! I couldn't have done it without you! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
TWO MONTHS AGO...  
  
Parker balanced precariously on the roof of the runaway ski lift, trying to concentrate on the hook that swung tauntingly in front of him. A rope attached to it was tethered to the belly of Thunderbird Two. He forcefully shoved the myriad of distractions--the long drop to the snow-laden mountains below, the jagged peaks looming menacingly in front, and the passengers in the lift, *especially* the passengers in the lift--to the back of his mind. Yet one thought kept insisting on taking the center stage of the cockney butler's thoughts:  
  
[If this doesn't work, everyone in the ski lift will die. Including m'lady. Including *me*!]   
  
Although he was worried about everyone in the lift, Lady Penelope was, as always, first and foremost in Parker's concerns. But this was not the time to think about how people's lives were endangered, Penelope's or anyone else's. Praying that his vertigo would hold off until a more convenient time, Parker slowly reached forward to grab the hook.  
  
The lifeline danced maddeningly out of reach of Parker's outstretched hand. Cursing, the ex-convict-turned-butler took a tentative step out towards the far end of the wayward lift, closer to the line. This was a mistake; the car lurched briefly to one side, throwing the lifeline farther out of reach, and nearly wrenching the metal lattice of the ski lift's support out of his grip. Parker scooted back in a hurry, towards relative safety...and even farther away from the lifeline. His temper started to stir.  
  
" 'ey now, Tracy!" he shouted up at the massive green Thunderbird vehicle. "Hefn' yer such a great pilot, let's see some o' that talent, eh?" This was a bit unfair, he realized, as Virgil Tracy was no doubt doing his best, but apparently that wasn't going to be good enough.   
  
Once more the lifeline was edging into Parker's reach. Once more the cockney ex-convict started to reach for it. It was closer this time, and his fingers actually brushed against the metal....  
  
All of a sudden, the world tipped and swirled around the hapless butler's eyes in a white maelstrom of snow and sky. His stomach lurched, his legs went weak, and he sank to his knees, staring down at the tram's roof to try and regain his steadiness. When that didn't work, Parker closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  
  
[Blasted vertigo!] he thought angrily. [Of all the confounded...eh?] Lady Penelope's voice had cut through the roaring between Parker's ears. He very carefully looked around to see what the trouble was.  
  
"Parker!" Penelope was shouting, "Use this!" An umbrella waved anxiously along the side of the ski lift's roof, swung by Parker's posh employer.  
  
Mentally uttering his gratitude and making a point to say it aloud at a more convenient time, Parker grasped the offered umbrella, stood back up, and tried again.  
  
Again and again, Parker swung the hook of the umbrella's handle against the hook of Thunderbird Two's lifeline. It missed each time, but was much closer than he could ever hope to get with his outstretched hand. The pressure of time running out had started to close in, the snowy mountain peaks looming closer than ever.   
  
[I'm not giving up!] Parker resolved. [I'm not letting anything happen to m'lady or anyone else!] And even though his hands had long gone numb in the bitter cold, even though his arm ached from the strain of hanging onto the lift's support column, he swung the umbrella at the lifeline. It missed! He swung again! And missed again! Swung! Missed! Swung...and caught it!  
  
Parker let loose a cackle of triumph as he pulled the lifeline home with his remaining strength and secured it. The metal rope held tight, and the car began to slow down. Only then did the cockney butler allow himself to rest, flopping down rather unceremoniously onto the metal roof of the lift while still holding onto the metal lattice.  
  
Unfortunately, Parker underestimated the force with which the tram would actually stop. No sooner had it jarred to a halt when the cockney butler felt himself shooting forward off the lift and into thin air. The ground seemed to rush towards him at unnatural speed, and he panicked, squeezing the umbrella's handle in his terror...  
  
There was a loud FWOOMP! and Parker's fall was slowed significantly by the umbrella's outstretched canvas. He was safe, and, more importantly, so were Lady Penelope and the other passengers on board the runaway ski lift.   
  
"Now if only me ticker h'would slow down to hey bit more normal," Parker muttered. "I just might be halright meself!" He slowly drifted down to terra firma, where Penelope was waiting. 


	2. Scenario 2

LAST YEAR  
  
"There are, uh, two people t-trapped in the corridor to the left," Brains radioed to Scott Tracy from his position at Mobile Control. "They're...both conscious, so you should g-give your top priority to the, uh, people further d-down."  
  
"F.A.B.," Scott replied.   
  
Normally Scott would be the one sitting at Mobile Control, while one or more of this younger brothers went into the danger zone. However, with Alan in the space station and John and Gordon out of service with the flu and a sprained knee respectively, that left only Scott and Virgil the strongest available for especially large emergencies. An earthquake in this small village outside Kyoto, Japan, had turned out to be just such an emergency, and with both of the eldest Tracy boys out pulling people from the rubble, Brains had been chosen to man Mobile Control while his physically stronger peers did the dirty work.  
  
A low rumble followed by terrified cries brought Brains' attention to a severely damaged building just a few yards away. Little was left intact, save one or two outer walls and a few floors in the lower stories. The rest had collapsed into a pile of dirt and concrete chunks at its shaky base.  
  
But also at the building's base were two people, a man and a woman, huddling in a tiny hovel made of a large, tilting slab of broken concrete and the space between the banks of dirt that had gathered up behind it. Both dug frantically at the ground, anxious to get at something Brains couldn't quite see. The huge concrete slab had started to lean even farther, proclaiming its inevitable fall onto the hapless people at its proverbial feet.  
  
[What are they doing?] the bespectacled scientist wondered. [Can't they see it's about to fall on top of them?] As he was under strict orders not to move from Mobile Control, Brains leaned a bit over the console and yelled at the couple in broken Japanese:  
  
"Hey! Y-you there! Get o-out of there! It-it's going to fall!" They ignored him. Puzzled, Brains stood up to try and see better. He caught a glimpse of filthy white cloth wrapped around a swarthy wrist, and felt his heart go cold with dread. There were not two people, as he had presumed, but three.  
  
[Someone's under there!] he realized. [I've got to tell the guys!] He grabbed the communicator, and called Scott.  
  
"Sorry fella, but we're a little busy here," Scott apologized when Brains told him about the people under the concrete slab. The sound of a crying infant accompanied his words. "There's a whole bunch of injured people down here, some of them are in a pretty bad way. Just hang on, okay?"  
  
"U-Understood. M-Mobile Control out," Brains replied. He glanced back up toward the trapped family.  
  
The third person--a teenaged boy--had been pulled free of his concrete prison, but was having trouble standing up. His right leg was badly twisted, and he and his parents floundered through the deep mud. The slab started to sink forward even faster, and Brains could tell that they weren't going to make it even if Scott were on his way back right now. He radioed his friends anyway.  
  
"Mobile Control to, uh, Scott and V-Virgil, how's the situation?"   
  
"Improved, actually," Virgil replied this time. "We're in the process of getting everyone in the Mole right now. We should be on our way in about three to five minutes."  
  
[The people under the slab aren't going to last that long,] the scientist thought glumly as he signed off. [I wish we'd brought more people along.] As acting field commander, Brains was under strict orders not to leave his post. But that would mean just standing by and watching that family get crushed to death by the falling concrete slab. He had a job to do, after all....  
  
[And that job is saving lives,] Brains concluded. [Whether it means building the machinery, operating it or...] He looked back up at the unfortunate individuals. [...or taking action!]  
  
With that, the scientist leapt from his post at Mobile Control and sprinted towards the three victims. Scott's voice was shouting something over the communications frequency, but Brains neither heard nor cared. He raced towards his goal just as the concrete slab began its final fall.  
  
The hapless family could only look upward in terror as death descended upon them in the form of thick concrete from the remains of their apartment building. They hunched down, bracing themselves for that final crushing blow.  
  
A blow which never came.  
  
Confused, the victims looked up to see what had happened. To their astonishment, the slab was being braced by one man clad in the blue uniform of International Rescue, complete with double-peaked cap and brown sash, as well as a pair of thick blue-rimmed glasses. And it was clear that he didn't have the strength to hold up the concrete slab for more than a few seconds.  
  
"Go!" he commanded. "Hurry!" The amazed and very grateful family of three shuffled out of harm's way as quickly as they could, just as Brains lost his grip and fell back. The slab collapsed with bone-shattering force, spraying mud and debris everywhere, but nobody was harmed. Brains stood just a foot away, gasping for breath.  
  
[I...I did it!] Brains thought in amazement. [I didn't think I had the strength to do such a thing, but I'm fairly certain that most of it was adrenaline and willpower anyway....]  
  
Then Scott and Virgil were standing around him, shouting excitedly while the rescued family was loaded into an ambulance.  
  
"My God, Brains! Are you all right? What happened? I saw what was happening toward the end, there's no way you could have been holding that slab up by yourself! It must have weighed several tons! Are you okay? You weren't supposed to leave Mobile Control! These guys are alive thanks to you! Geez, you could have been killed!"  
  
"J-Just doing...my job...aarrghh!!!" Brains' explanation was interrupted by a flare of excruciating pain tearing through his back, and he sank to the ground.  
  
"I'm getting the stretcher," Scott barked. "Man, Brains, you must've really torn yourself up!"  
  
The young scientist was in too much pain to do more than moan softly in reply. 


	3. Scenario 3

THE OTHER DAY:  
  
"Everyone's on board," John Tracy announced. "Prepare to head for home!" Down in Thunderbird Three's sickbay, Tintin could feel the floor tilting slightly as the great spaceship turned gracefully away from the evacuated space station and towards the Earth. She paid no attention, however; the injured people pulled from the meteor-stricken space station were far more important.  
  
Suddenly, the Thunderbird shuddered violently as something struck her near the stern--a remnant from the freak meteor shower that had punched holes in the space station and spilled its precious atmosphere into space. Tintin stumbled as the floor heaved under her feet, while the terrified astronauts in the stretchers moaned in dismay. The sound and feel of a meteor strike was still painfully fresh in their minds, apparently.  
  
"Tintin!" Alan's voice blared over the intercom. "Are you all right? We were hit by one of the leftover meteors!"  
  
"I know!" the Malaysian girl told him. "There's no visible damage, though...wait, there's something wrong." An acrid smell had wafted into her nostrils. Tintin's heart jumped as she recognized it: smoke. They were on fire!   
  
"Alan, there's a fire down here!" she said, keeping her voice low. "It looks like it's somewhere outside the sickbay." The smoke was visible now, floating up from under the door like sooty cobwebs that had been freed from their silken moorings. An alarm bell went off in Tintin's mind. Why hadn't the fire suppression system put it out by now?  
  
"I know, we're picking it up on damage control up here," Alan replied. "It looks like the stray meteor hit the engine room. My guess is that it tore a hole to the outside and knocked some electrical wiring loose. That would explain why the fire suppression system is offline: the oxygen leak would keep the CO2 nozzles from firing."  
  
"Are...are we going to be okay?" Tintin asked. "Can we make it back to Earth, or at least to Thunderbird Five?"  
  
"Speedwise, yes, we can reach Earth," Alan's tone was grim, "but there's still more bad news. The wires that were knocked loose by the meteor was the ones powering the retros, and the blow knocked us off course. Unless the retros are repaired, the only way we're getting back to Earth is sideways and at several hundred thousand miles per hour."  
  
"Say no more, Alan," Tintin said resolutely, and closed the connection. Without waiting to see whether or not Alan would try to call back, she went to the nearby supply closet, grabbed a tool kit, and walked out into the smoky hallway to the engine room.  
  
***  
  
The door to the engine room was red-hot, but Tintin hardly noticed. The spacesuit she had donned was constructed from the best heat-resistant materials Brains could come up with. Clutching a fire extinguisher tightly in the crook of one arm, the Malaysian woman lugged the huge door open and went into the engine room.  
  
Bright orange flames danced as high as the ceiling before her. The heat pouring forth brought beads of sweat from Tintin's forehead even from inside the suit, and the smoke was chokingly thick. Without hesitating, she blasted the flames directly in her path with the fire extinguisher's full force. It was hard going, even with the combined curse and blessing of the atmosphere blowing out of the tiny hole to her right, but the oxygen-starved flames soon gave way beneath Tintin's assault.  
  
With the flames subdued, Tintin made her way over to the hole in the side of the ship and assessed the situation. The wires had been severed all right, and some sparks still danced at the ends of the live ones. The culprit was lodged tightly in a shallow dent of its own making in the floor just behind her, but Tintin was certain that the meteorite couldn't do any more damage from there. She dug a welding torch out of the tool kit and turned it on.  
  
"Alan, how long until re-entry?" she asked into the intercom. The Malaysian could see the blue curve of the Earth starting to eclipse the hole in front of her.  
  
"About fifteen, twenty minutes," Alan reported back grimly. "And at the wrong angle." Tintin looked at the wires again. This was going to take at least thirty minutes to fix....  
  
[Then again, no one said I had to do a *perfect* job,] she thought. [Just an adequate one.]  
  
The actual repair job turned out to be trickier than Tintin anticipated. The frayed ends of the wires shimmied violently in the wind of the escaping atmosphere, and she received quite a few shocks for her troubles as she tried to get a good grip to secure them. Once secured, however, welding them back together was relatively easy.  
  
"Ten minutes!" Alan's panicked voice burst from the communicator inside Tintin's helmet.  
  
"Try the retros now," she replied. The Earth now completely filled the hole in front of her. Time was running out.  
  
"No go!" came the reply. "Retros still aren't functioning!" Tintin started to feel a little edgy herself; the repair wasn't even halfway finished. She started working faster now, uttering a sharp curse in her native Malay as she miscalculated the temperature of the welder and burned a restored cable right through again by mistake.  
  
"Five minutes!" Alan reported from the cockpit. Tintin went as fast as she dared. The results of her labors became increasingly sloppy, but the connections were being made. The blue of the Earth started to take on an orange tinge as Thunderbird Three fell into its atmosphere.  
  
One more to go....  
  
"That's it Alan!" Tintin cried into the communicator. "Fire retros!"  
  
There was a deafening roar all around her as the rocketship's engines sprang to life. The hastily-rejoined cables hissed and spasmed with fresh power. An orange flame shot up from the right of the hull breach as the retros started up, and the Earth began to tilt. It had worked! Tintin giggled with a warm sensation of relief. Then she realized that the warmth wasn't just in her mind.  
  
Turning away from the breach, the Malaysian was horrified to see that the fire had crept up around her again. Apparently, there was still enough air left in the sealed engine room to keep them alive, and now they had regained strength somehow, possibly from ruptured oxygen tanks somewhere in the room. Tintin immediately grabbed her extinguisher and fired, but only a small spatter of retardant came out. Empty. Her mind raced frantically.  
  
[I need to get the fire suppressors working!] she thought. [But how? The manual override is outside and blocked off by the fire! Wait. The fire suppressant system isn't working because...because of the atmosphere leak...so if I seal the leak....] Tintin glanced back at the hole in Thunderbird's side. There was no way she could patch it up in time. At least, not by any conventional means.  
  
Desperate now, Tintin turned back to the breach in the hull and placed both hands over it, blocking it as best she could. It was only the size of a golf ball, and her palms covered it completely, but still she worried. After all, there was no way she could make a complete seal this way, and it might not be enough....  
  
But it was.  
  
The CO2 nozzles came on with a hiss, suffocating the remainder of the fire. Soon, all that remained was a layer of soot and minor charring.  
  
"Tintin to John and Alan," the Malaysian girl spoke into her communicator. "Situation is resolved down here. Am returning to sickbay."  
  
"Are you all right?" John asked. "The monitors say that the fire's out and obviously the retros are working again."  
  
"I'm fine, John" Tintin replied. She was standing outside the sealed door of the engine room, removing her space suit. "Now I need to get back to sickbay. I still have work left to do there."  
  
She put the toolbox back where she found it, and headed back to the infirmary. 


	4. Radio Show

THIS AFTERNOON  
  
"...I would like to take this time to tell you all something I heard from a friend. I don't know if this is an actual story or not, but I would like to believe it is.  
  
"One day there was a landslide somewhere in South America. A young child of about ten or so had been trapped inside one of the buildings for three days, and all efforts of conventional rescue had failed. For much of the time, the lack of food and water and the extent of her injuries left her in semiconscious daze. But when she was awake, she wept bitterly at the thought of never seeing her family again.  
  
"Then one morning, a light penetrated the child's prison, the first she had seen in days, and when her eyes adjusted, she saw a person standing there. The girl wept yet again, but now it was from joy at being saved. She reached out her hands, and the newcomer grasped them gently.  
  
" 'I'm from International Rescue,' the stranger said in the child's native tongue. 'I'm here to get you out!'  
  
"'I...I cannot say...how grateful I am,' the girl whispered. 'Please, what is your name?'"  
  
" 'I can't tell you my name', the other replied. 'I'm sorry, but we can't let anyone know who we are.'  
  
" 'In that case,' the girl replied, 'I will call you "Angel"'.  
  
"The IR agent asked, 'Why's that?'"  
  
"The child replied, 'I heard that International Rescue is dedicated to helping people. They're like angels watching over the world.  
  
" 'And since you work for Internation Rescue, therefore, you must be an angel.'" 


End file.
